Columns

We can see the spirit of the season all around us – brightly colored lights cover homes, nativity scenes are set up at churches, and store windows are decked out. The sounds of the holidays fill the airwaves and carolers take to the streets and bring cheer to the halls of nursing homes. This time of year evokes many sentiments. There are feelings of nostalgia and memories of Christmases past. It also represents a sense of comfort and familiarity as well as time with family and friends. And for many it is a season of hope.

President Barack Obama’s move to end our ridiculous estrangement from the people of Cuba by establishing formal relations and setting up embassies is not just the right thing to do, it should have been done a long time ago.
Our hostile policy toward Cuba has for a long time been nothing more than an outdated relic of the Cold War. The time has long since passed that “fighting communism,” and the warmongering hysteria that went along with it, is relevant.

Cut Unnecessary Regulatory Burden, Inc. (CURB) was formed as a Virginia not-for-profit corporation in April 2011 to educate our Community on the importance of State property rights. On December the 8th the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Cheryl A. LaFleur responded to a Congressional inquiry from Congressman Robert Hurt regarding the implementation of the Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) for Smith Mountain Lake, VA.

I would first like to thank and applaud the gentleman who wrote the “A Grave Injustice” article a few weeks ago regarding the closing of our schools in Bedford County, and the disheartening and irresponsible work of our Superintendent, Doug Schuch, to destroy our school system since 2009.

As a young president in 1961, John F. Kennedy was reluctant to approve what history would later call the “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba.
Supporting a Cuban exile invasion of the island to rid America of what warmongers and Cold Warriors considered a communist pest was justified by CIA planners, who had put the scheme together in the months before Kennedy became president.

One of the negative aspects of our history is that some racial and ethnic groups have been shown favors that others did not get. Black people got the short end of the stick in that respect for generations even after slavery was ended. Black people were subject to de jure discrimination in the South until the 1960s and de facto discrimination in the North for much longer.

As I travel across Virginia's Fifth District, I often hear from my constituents about how unnecessary bureaucratic red tape is hindering job growth and making life more difficult for working Virginians. Our nation’s outdated and complicated tax code is a perfect example of the federal government standing in the way of strengthening our economy for our nation’s families and small businesses.

In the wake of the two latest instances of police killings of unarmed African-American men, we find ourselves in yet another conversation about racism and our system of criminal justice.
As if the Michael Brown situation in St. Louis wasn’t questionable enough, it’s the lack of indictment of the officer who blatantly killed 43-year-old Eric Garner, that has again sparked outrage.

It’s always funny when Rick Howell in his Liberal Agenda accuses conservatives of something, and immediately proceeds, in the same column, to do exactly what he’s accused conservatives of doing. He did that last week when he attempted to defend President Obama’s executive order on immigration by comparing it to President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation after writing “Extremism produces its own logic.” He inadvertently proved his own point.